Chapter Text
Not everyone has an instinct, an animal self that lives inside a person, born from their souls and forged to live in their flesh. Hundreds of years ago it was common to have bears, rabbits, fish, and lions, a menagerie of animals, but now, as time and dilution of bloodlines has increased, the most common thing to have is nothing at all.
Not all instincts are the same either. Some weaker, some stronger, some with abilities, and some with nothing more than an aroma of “not quite human at all” about them. Some force the person to live in constant agony as they rip and tear at their humanity to drag them down into the depravity of their animal urges until there is nothing left but the husk of the person that was. Some unify with their instinct and blend as if the two were never separate at all, forging alliances that can never be broken.
Kinn opens his eyes and wonders what that’s like.
In front of him the expanse of Bangkok shines in the evening sun as it transitions from day into night, the balm of the burnt orange sunset dipping into the twinkling lights of the high rises, and the noise, normally a steady thrum at this height, is nothing to the gush of water that laps at his back. His instinct is one that hurts. It barely sleeps, curled up from nose to tail. Instead, it itches and burns under his skin; his back a patchwork of iridescent scales and raw cuts in between them as it splits and rends with each movement of his shoulder blades, coupled with the pale almost translucent skin that scarcely covers them.
“Khun Kinn.” Pete bows as he approaches the opposite side of the pool that Kinn is sitting in. Kinn scented him at the door of his rooms, the fur of Pete’s instinct tickling his nose despite being completely dressed in his normal suited attire. “An invitation has arrived.”
That gets him to stand, water lapping at his waist as Pete approaches and reaches across the boundary of the pool to hand Kinn the invite. It’s a black envelope with silver script: “Theerapanyakul”. Inside it is the same paper with the same script but only an address this time.
He hands it back sharply to Pete, “I’m not interested.”
Pete looks at him, shifting uncomfortably.
“What?” He demands. He’s been out of the water too long, his skin feels tight and aggravated, the heat building.
“It’s from your father, sir,” Pete smiles but it can’t be regarded as anything more than a wince.
Kinn exhales through his nose harshly. It’s not an invitation or a request; it’s an order.
Of course one would send a fox to give an order. As if Kinn needed any cajoling when his father demands it or that in any such event Pete would be the one to do it.
Kinn turns and puts himself back under until the water is lapping at his collarbones, broad strokes of his arms take him back to his seat. It’s a poor man’s salve but he closes his eyes and lets it soothe him just the same. “When?”
“Tonight, sir.”
Inside him the jaw opens in a yawning maw. It helps him to envision it like that, a beast that exists whole inside him with its own wants and desires separate from his own even if it’s a fallacy that breaks as surely as the dawn. His fingers crack at the knuckles as he curls and uncurls them, his instinct's tail swishes and the spiked ridges run along his own spine as it flexes. He grits his teeth as his back aches more tightly, the scales knitting closer together. They’ll split soon if he doesn’t do anything about it.
“I’ll go. Prepare for it,” Kinn tells him as he sits himself back on the steps. “Pete.”
Pete had turned to go but he stops and looks back at Kinn, “Khun Kinn?”
“What color are my eyes?”
He knows it before Pete says it, but he waits for an answer: “Gold, sir.”
Kinn rolls his head from side to side to loosen his neck as he brings his arms up to lean on the stair behind him, “You may go.”
“I can send for someone,” Pete tells him quietly.
Licking his lips, he considers it. He knows he has to. His body won’t last much longer without expending the excess heat and power of his instinct.
“Not a snake” is his only term.
Pete nods, “But—”
Snakes accept Kinn’s heat best but they overheat easily, pass out and leave themselves in Kinn’s bed when he wants them gone. He also doesn’t like the slithering touch of them on his skin.
“No.”
With a deeper bow of his head, Pete’s gone.
Talons scratch at the inside of his ribs and Kinn grits his teeth and lets a wave of heat pulse out from his skin. The steam rises off of him and he slips under enough so that he can dunk his whole head and push his hair back off his face in the weightlessness of the water.
He stays there for a long moment. It’s not uncomfortable to him in the slightest, in fact, his instinct eases in the hugging pressure of the water. Gold eyes bore out of him and into him, and his back feels split open anew. He knows the water isn’t stained with his blood but the agony that ripples through him feels like it. Slamming a mental door on those gold eyes, Kinn launches himself out of the water with a gasp. His back is throbbing and no amount of water can ease it. Scratching it won’t help. Ice won’t help. Knives slicing into his skin won’t help. He grits his teeth and barely stops himself from gnashing them like the animal inside him that licks its lips, victorious in its play.
Kinn grasps the glass edge of the pool, the solidity calming him as he breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, his heart racing. He feels a certain kind of hatred when he gives into his instinct. His mind feels beholden and chained to the insolence of a barely sentient creature that knows nothing of his mind or his heart. As if to mock him further, his instinct curls up and waits, doesn’t even bother to pace anymore since it knows it’s going to get fed. Going to get filled up in its belly, gobbling down the heat of another and pouring out its own scorching demands. All it has to do is wait.
So he knows when the glass cracks under his fingertips moments later, it’s his own anger that does it. It slices into his skin and the pain does little, but it does remind him he’s human. Inhale, 1, 2, 3. Exhale, 1, 2, 3.